The invention concerns a locking cylinder that consists of a cylinder core, which is rotatably supported in a two-part bearing housing and initiates certain functions in the vehicle when a key is turned.
Vehicle doors or hatches are an important area of application of locking cylinders of this type. The functions arising in this case are the securing and releasing of the doors and hatches. This is intended to bar access to the vehicle by unauthorized persons. Authorized persons have a key that is assigned to the locking cylinder and is inserted in a key slot of the cylinder core and thereby moves the spring-loaded tumblers into the cylinder core. The cylinder core can then be moved by means of the key from a home position to various operating positions. The upper and lower parts of the bearing housing serve the purpose of rotatably supporting the cylinder core and hold other possible components of the housing. At one end of the joined housing parts, the key slot is accessible to the key, while a driver is rotatably supported at the other end. The driver transmits a rotation of the cylinder core via a connecting rod to the functional parts in the vehicle located behind the locking cylinder.
In the previously known locking cylinder, the two parts of the housing, together with the components they hold, must be held together by pins. When the two parts of the housing have to be separated from each other, e.g., to replace a defective component, the removal of the spiral pin is a laborious operation. In addition, points of application for the fastening means must be provided on the housing, by which the housing can be mounted on the body of the vehicle. This is time-consuming and takes up too much space.
EP 0 221 375 A1 concerns the “sandwich mounting” of a locking cylinder, the details of which are not shown, in a hole of a body wall. Two mounting parts, which engage each other from opposite sides of the body wall and are joined by a bayonet coupling, serve as mounting means for the installation of this locking cylinder. The two mounting parts have no bearings for rotatably supporting the cylinder core of the locking cylinder, the details of which are not shown.
DE 203 12 399 U1 also discloses a sandwich mounting of a locking cylinder in a hole of a pane of glass by means of two mounting parts, which are supported with flanges on the two opposite sides of the pane of glass. The two mounting parts are tightened relative to each other by three bolts and thus hold the locking cylinder between them. The bolts have no effect with respect to holding the components of the locking cylinder together; the locking cylinder is already completely assembled when installed and has no need of further means to hold it together.
Finally, GB 2 245 643 A also describes a sandwich mounting of a fully assembled locking cylinder in a central hole of a door. To this end, two mounting parts that fit against the two outside surfaces of the door are tightened relative to each other by two screws. The screws do not interact with the components of the locking cylinder. First, the two mounting parts are attached to the door, and only then is the assembled locking cylinder inserted. One-piece, elastically deformable retention fingers are used to mount the locking cylinder in one of the two mounting parts. These retention fingers have hook-like ends that snap into an annular, circumferentially continuous groove.
In DE 200 16 108 U1, a complete locking cylinder is inserted in the drill hole of a base plate, which is mounted on the rear side of a vehicle door. A pull handle is then twisted in, so that it is rotatably supported from the outside of the door in the base plate on the rear side. Then, on the front side, a cover is placed over the protruding section of the locking cylinder, which secures the pull handle in its mounted position. A fastening screw passes through a drill hole in the cover and a drill hole in the base plate and is screwed into a threaded hole in the housing of the locking cylinder. The mounted locking cylinder is thus nonrotatably fixed in the drill hole of the base plate. The fastening screw has no effect with respect to holding together the components of the locking cylinder.
WO 00/43619 A1 shows, first of all, an external housing that is permanently mounted in a receptacle of a door. The external housing holds an internal housing, which has a cross-sectional profile in the form of a figure eight and consists of an upper housing cavity and a lower housing cavity. The lower housing cavity has a cylindrical bore for the rotatable support of the actual cylinder core, while the upper housing cavity always accommodates a number of sections of pin tumblers, of which a last section is positioned in the cylinder core when the key is inserted. To mount the internal housing in the external housing, the key must be inserted and brought into a well-defined inclined position to expose a slot in the internal housing. Only then, during the mounting operation, can an inner projection in the receptacle of the external housing be moved into the slot in the internal housing. The means for fastening the internal and external housing have nothing to do with holding the cylinder core and the internal housing together, but rather a separate locking ring is used for this purpose, which snaps into a groove in the cylinder core that projects from the internal housing.